The Lady in the Car

“Two years.”

“And she’s looking for a second, I suppose?”

“That’s my belief.”

“I wonder if she’d be attracted by the title of princess?” he laughed.

“Why, the very suggestion would take the silly old woman’s breath away,” declared the Reverend Thomas.

“Well, if she’s so confoundedly generous, what is to prevent us from benefiting a bit? We sadly need it, Tommy,” the Prince declared. “I had a letter from Max the day before yesterday. He wants fifty wired without fail to the Poste Restante at Copenhagen. He’s lying low there, just now.”

“And one of the best places in Europe,” the Parson exclaimed. “It’s most snug at the ‘Angleterre,’ or at the ‘Bristol.’ I put in six months there once. Stockholm is another good spot. I was all one summer at that little hotel out at Salsjobaden, and had quite a good time. I passed as an American and nobody recognised me, though my description had been circulated all over Europe. The Swedish and Danish police are a muddle-headed lot – fortunately for fellows like ourselves who want to lie undisturbed. Have you sent Max the money?”

“I wired twenty-five this morning, and promised the balance in seven days,” responded his Highness, lighting a fresh cigarette with his half-consumed one. He always smoked in the Russian style, flinging away the end when only half finished.

Of the proceeds of the various coups made, his Highness took one-third, with one-third to Clayton, who was a schemer almost as ingenious as the Prince himself, and the remaining third was divided between Max Mason, Charles, and Garrett, the chauffeur.

The pair of conspirators spent the greater part of the afternoon together in exchanging confidences and arranging plans. Then his Highness rang for Garrett, and ordered him to bring round the car at five o’clock.

The Parson descended to the hall below, being followed ten minutes later by his Highness. The latter found his friend lounging picturesquely with the fascinated widow, and joined them at tea, greatly to the gratification of the “pompous old crow,” as Prince Albert had designated her half an hour before.

As they finished the tea and muffins, the big yellow racing-car drew slowly up to the door, and on seeing it the widow began to discuss motors and motoring.

“I have a car at home – a sixty-Mercédès – and I’m awfully fond of a run in it,” she told the Prince. “One gets about so quickly, and sees so much of the country. My poor husband hated them, so I never rode in one until after his death.”

“The car I have with me is a racer, as you see,” remarked his Highness. “It’s a hundred horse-power, and made a record on the Brooklands track just before I bought her. If you were not of the feminine sex, Mrs Edmondson, I’d invite you to go for a run with me,” he laughed. “It’s rather unsociable, for it’s only a two-seater, with Garrett on the step.”

“I’d love to go for a run,” she declared. “It – well it really wouldn’t be too great a breach of the convenances for a woman to go out on a racing-car, would it?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs Edmondson,” remarked the Reverend Thomas, in his most cultivated clerical drawl. “But I would wrap up well, for the Prince travels very fast on a clear road.”

So “the old crow” decided to accept his Highness’s invitation, and ascended to put on her brown motor-cap and veil and a thick coat against the chill, evening winds.

Two

A quarter of an hour later, with Garrett – in his grey and red livery – seated on the step, and the widow up beside him, the Prince drew the great ugly yellow car out of the hotel entrance, while the Parson, standing amid the crowd of jealous onlookers, waved his hand in merry farewell.

In a few moments the siren screamed, and the open exhaust roared and spluttered as they crossed the Stray, taking the road through Starbeck to Knaresborough, thence south by Little Ribston to Wetherby.

Having turned off to the left through the town, they came upon a straight open road where, for the first time his Highness, accustomed as he was to all the vagaries of his powerful car, put on a “move” over the ten miles into York, a run at such a pace that the widow clung to her seat with both hands, almost breathless.

She had never travelled half so fast before in all her life.

In York they ran round by the station past the old grey minster, then out again through Clifton, as far as Shipton Moor, turning up to Beningborough station, and thence into the by-roads to Newton-upon-Ouse, in the direction of Knaresborough.

Once or twice while they tore along regardless of speed-limits or of police-traps, the powerful engine throbbing before them, she turned to his Highness and tried to make some remarks. But it was only a sorry attempt. Travelling at fifty miles an hour over those white roads, without a glass screen, or even body to the car, was very exhilarating, and after the first few minutes of fright, at the tearing pace, she seemed to delight in it. Curious though it is, yet it is nevertheless a fact that women delight in a faster pace in a car than men, when once the first sensation of danger has passed.

When they were safely back again in the hall of the hotel she turned to him to express her great delight at the run.

“Your car is, indeed, a magnificent one, your Highness. I’ve never been on a racer before,” she said, “but it was truly delightful. I never had a moment’s anxiety, for you are such a sure and clever driver.”

Her eye had been from time to time upon the speedometer, and she had noted the terrific rate at which they had now and then travelled, especially upon any downward incline.

The Prince, on his part, was playing the exquisite courtier. Had she been a girl of twenty he could not have paid “old crow” more attention.

As he was dressing for dinner with the aid of the faithful Charles, the Parson entered, and to him he gave an accurate description of the run, and of the rather amorous attitude the obese widow had assumed towards him.

“Good, my dear boy,” exclaimed the urbane cleric, “I told you that she’s the most perfect specimen of the snob we’ve ever met.”

A week went by – a pleasant week, during which Mrs Edmondson, her nose now an inch higher in the air than formerly, went out daily with the Prince and his chauffeur for runs around the West Riding.

One afternoon they ran over to Ripon, and thence across to the fine old ruins of Fountains Abbey. Like many women of her class and character, the buxom lady delighted in monastic ruins, and as the pair strolled about in the great, roofless transept of the Abbey she commenced an enthusiastic admiration of its architecture and dimensions. Though living at Whitby she had, curiously enough, never before visited the place.

“Crowland, in Lincolnshire is very fine,” she remarked, “but this is far finer. Yet we have nothing in England to compare with Pavia, near Milan. Have you ever been there, Prince?”

“Only through the station,” his Highness replied. Truth to tell he was not enthusiastic over ruins. He was a very modern up-to-date young man.

They idled through the ruins, where the sunshine slanted through the gaunt broken windows, and the cawing rooks flapped lazily in and out. One or two other visitors were there besides themselves, and among them a lonely pale-faced man in grey, wearing gold pince-nez who, with hands behind his back, was studying the architecture and the various outbuildings.

The Prince and his companion brushed close by him in the old refectory, when he glanced up suddenly at a window.

His face was familiar enough to his Highness, who, however, passed him by as a stranger.

It was Max Mason, only yesterday returned from Copenhagen.

That afternoon the widow grew confidential with her princely cavalier in motor clothes, while he, on his part, encouraged her.

“Ah!” he sighed presently as they were walking slowly together in a distant part of the great ruined fabric. “You have no idea how very lonely a man can really be, even though he may be born a prince. More often than not I’m compelled to live incognito, for I have ever upon me the fierce glare of publicity. Every movement, every acquaintance I make, even my most private affairs are pried into and chronicled by those confounded press fellows. And for that reason I’m often compelled to hold aloof from people with whom I could otherwise be on terms of intimate friendship. Half my time and ingenuity is spent upon the adoption of subterfuges to prevent people from discovering who I really am. And then those infernal illustrated papers, both here and on the Continent, are eternally republishing my photograph.”

“It really must be most annoying, Prince,” remarked the widow sympathetically.

“I often adopt the name of Burchell-Laing,” he said, “and sometimes – well,” and he paused, looking her straight in the face. “I wonder, Mrs Edmondson, whether I might confide in you – I mean whether you would keep my secret?”

“I hope I may be permitted to call myself your Highness’s friend,” she said in a calm, impressive tone. “Whatever you may tell me will not, I assure you, pass my lips.”

“I am delighted to have such a friend as yourself,” he declared enthusiastically. “Somehow, though our acquaintanceship has been of such brief duration, yet I feel that your friendship is sincere, Mrs Edmondson.”

By this speech the widow was intensely flattered. Her companion saw it in her countenance.

He did not allow her time to make any remark, but added: “My secret is – well a rather curious one, perhaps – but the fact is that I have a dual personality. While being Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein, I am also known as Dick Drummond, holder of two records on the Brooklands motor-track. In the motor-world I’m believed to be a young man of means, who devotes his time to motor-racing – a motor-maniac in fact.”

The widow stared at him in blank astonishment.

“Are you really the Mr Drummond of whose wonderful feat I read of only the other day in the papers?”

“I won the race at Brooklands the other day,” he said carelessly, “I won it with the car I have here now.”

“And nobody suspects that this Mr Drummond is a prince!” she exclaimed.